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Blood is Thicker than Liquid
Leland's mother passes away, and he's forced to attend a funeral where he'd have to confront the remainder of his family. Meanwhile, Jody and Judy are plagued by a series of nightmares which may be foretelling of what may happen. Cold Open Jody and Judy, a few years younger, are in the kitchen, laughing uproariously as they consume copious amounts of candy. The footage becomes grainy as Judy looks to the camera and smile malevolently. Plot Jody steps into his room and remarks on how all of his friends have vanished. Judy comes into his room in tears and directs him to the TV, where a report plays regarding a burning building. Jody's clique is inside and in an attempt to get out, break a hole through the window and leap down to their deaths. In a fourth wall break, Judy remarks that she's unwilling to continue and walks out, only to get pushed back by the director. She climbs out through what turns out to be a prop window where preparations are being made on the other side of the wall. Jody ventures into a room with lit candles and goes to a table with an obscured cloth hanging, chanting in tongues. Leland and Dakota prepare for the day. They note that their connection with the family is falling thin, as their kids are unwilling to spend time together. This is disrupted by a call Leland receives from a retirement community in Odessa, Texas. Leland's mother Shelly had been there and had recently succumbed to a fatal aneurism. A service will be held there due to financial constraints and at the behest of the rest of the family. Leland is reluctant to go, as his family considers him a black sheep and over years of guilt encountered when he cut his mother out of his life in his adolescence. Dakota isn't warmly regarded by his family either (Leland's family is part Italian while Dakota's Irish.) and opts to not go. The kids come in (sans Judy) and are clued in on the news. To Judy, she awakens but finds that the doors and windows in her room had disappeared. As she frantically searches for the exit, the room becomes more decrepit and blurs, swallowing her. This turns out to be another nightmare, but Dakota and Leland don't want to hear about it, telling Judy to get ready to go to the funeral. With everyone prepared, they set out by car; Leland expects to take as long as possible to get there to avoid his family while being honest about his methods. During the trip, they wind up in Iowa and decide to spend the night. Jody has another dream, where he finds himself in an empty theater with a film playing depicting mountains. Jody attempts to escape as a figure comes into view, but finds himself unable to move. To Judy, she's playing with toy cars, only to lose them as the room she's in turns out to be a nuclear tower that's about to erupt. She is also unable to move. Both wake up screaming. Their parents are sympathetic this time around and the two explain the nightmares they've had so far. Due to no clear pattern, they don't question if anything more is occurring. Leland takes the two outside to get snacks from the vending machine and goes over his past, why he's reluctant to attend the funeral. Years back during a road trip, Shelly had prevented Leland from engaging in things she deemed unsafe and took the side of everyone else. When he left to use the bathroom and came back, he found he was left behind. He soon finds his family by the pumps, but Shelly didn't care. Leland took it as her not caring for him and he declared he wouldn't speak to her ever again, opting to live with his father Lionel in Terrell. The next morning, the Mahoneys arrive in Odessa. To Leland's dismay, he learns the funeral had been delayed and he had made it ten minutes early. He meets the rest of his family, blue collar tool and die worker Chet, his son and wannabe gangster Clyde, welfare mooch Mort, dour Eb and Lionel. While Leland and Lionel's reunion goes well, he isn't as lucky with the former three; Clyde mocks Leland's more conservative outlook on life, Chet bemoans white collar workers and how he had never been able to catch a break with his own work life and Mort is drunk, annoying everyone with mindless diatribes. The service is furthered delayed and everyone decides to hang out to kill time. Dakota proposes that they go outside to play a game of catch, but it sours when Chet makes discriminatory remarks on Dakota's Irish roots. After Dakota refers to Chet as a guinea, a fight breaks out and Chet gets his arm broken. Eb complains about Artemis' naive nature and we learn that Eb's negative outlook on life stems from Leland getting out of trouble and Eb getting blamed, even if he tried to do the right thing and losing faith in morality. An attempt at cheering Eb up leads to him getting a more distorted view of reality. Mort nearly gropes Adelaide and a punch in the face is enough to get him to back off and leave until he sobers up. Clyde comes close to bonding with Jody and Judy, but the two prank him by knocking him unconscious and putting a fairy princess costume on him. The two are left with nothing to do and decide to experiment with their nightmares by sleeping and seeing what'd come next. Jody seemingly awakens but finds everyone had gone. He sees Dakota reading a book in another room, but is still. He gets the book and slowly withers away. Judy awakens in darkness and upon getting the lights, finds she is without her hands and legs and in a room with a broken water pipe. In the real world, they're hauled away as the service begins. The family gives their pieces on Shelly, but Leland turns out to be the least offensive speaker as others selfishly blame her for their shortcomings in life. Chet claims Leland has no right to defend her as he abandoned her, and Leland just accepts it, rounding up the rest of their family to leave. He is stopped, as Chet proposes to read Shelly's will. In the will, Chet is left with nothing as he opted to do everything himself and feels that work is far more rewarding, Clyde is left with nothing, being deemed a worthless disappointment, Mort had been forgotten about and Shelly assumed he already died due to his alcoholism going back years, Eb is left with nothing, to his further dismay, and Leland is given Shelly's childhood home as an apology; she had been plagued with guilt since Leland left, and it's enough to lift his spirits as he had been fighting guilt over leaving his mother in the first place. As the Mahoneys leave, Mort drinks more and succumbs to pulmonary aspiration. Eb goes for help and falls down the stairs, getting paralyzed from the fall. Jody and Judy compare the events to their nightmares, ruling out the rest by Judy comparing her limbless nightmare to Chet's helplessness, Eb to their paralysis dreams and Mort to Judy's first nightmare. Jody rules out the book nightmare as a lack of connection to Dakota, which is immediately resolved. The family parts and Jody tries to think of his first nightmare, determining if it's another omen. He gets a call from Randy, asking about when the clique should gather and Jody advises them to go to his house, fearing his nightmare will come true. For the rest, he invites Judy to join him and she takes her second nightmare as a sign of being trapped in a rut and agrees without a second thought. Finally for the chant, he thinks over what's said and compares it to a rap rock song, perhaps being a sign he'd meet Clyde. To the funeral home, Artemis set off a chain of events leading to a fire breaking out and the exits getting barred. The family gets severely burned as they try to break through boiling hot glass. Lionel is reluctant to face his family and is pushed back by onlookers to change his mind, later getting away through a nearby overpass. A flashback occurs to Shelly doing what appears to be a demonic chant, and she is shot by a pair of orderlies who opt to pass the death as an aneurysm. She damned Chet, Clyde, Mort and Eb to hell for their means of coping with their worst aspects. Trivia * The episode was never reran following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, likely due to the opening sequence depicting a burning skyscraper. * Julie is jarringly absent from the episode. It's said she had the flu and was allowed to skip the funeral. * The chant Jody gives in the cold open is actually the lyrics to Butterfly by Crazy Town said backwards.